"Vegan-washing" and the fanaticism of the far-Left

+972 has an unintentionally hypocritical article about tensions within Israel's vegan community.

A fanatic animal-rights activist named Gary Yourofsky is planning to speak about his passion in Ariel, which is of course in the "territories." +972 finds this hard to believe, because it is such a left-wing topic; how could he even think about speaking in a city that is deemed illegal by the international community?

His answer shocked the +972-niks:

“Since the ‘international community’ is comprised of violent, bloodthirsty thugs who terrorize billions of innocent animals every second of every minute of every hour of every day, the ‘international community’ can go to HELL,” he wrote back.

Responding to the core question of the Palestinian struggle and the call to boycott Israeli academia and the settlements, Yourofsky said he sees no point in caring about any human beings so long as animals that are being regularly slaughtered. “When people start eating sliced up Jew flesh, or seared Palestinian children in between two slices of bread with onions, pickles and mustard, then I’ll be concerned about the Middle East situation.”

The +972 author, Haggai Matar, tries to wrap his head around such thinking, and finally gets an answer. Another animal rights activist explains that Yourofsky is a "single issue activist" who is focused on animal rights above all. He is, simply, a fanatic. Some people can be so obsessed with a single topic that they can be understood, even if their resulting actions are unforgivable.

Matar then quotes far left anti-Zionist Aeyal Gross, in Haaretz (Hebrew), where he notes that recently Bibi Netanyahu made statements supporting animal rights during a cabinet meeting. It wasn't a policy statement, it wasn't a public speech, it was just a conversation during a meeting.

Gross is incensed at how such a disgusting person as Netanyahu could possibly advocate a liberal position on anything. It is like Gross, a "part vegetarian part vegan," is sickened that he could have anything in common with the prime minister of Israel.

So Aeyal Gross, who had previously railed against Israel's officially gay-friendly public stance, called this "vegan-washing" as a successor to the ridiculous term "pinkwashing."

What Haggai Matar is completely blind to is that while he is condescending towards single-issue activists for animal rights, he doesn't realize that his article, +972 magazine and his entire far-Left community is focused on a single issue as well: the  evil of Israel, especially the"occupation."

To these fanatics - and they are no less fanatic than Gary Yourofsky - there is only one issue, Israel's supposedly horrible treatment of non-Jews. When they hear about Yourofsky speaking in Ariel, the first question they ask is "what about the occupation?" When they hear that a politician they don't like advocates a liberal position, they ask "what about the occupation?" When they see Israel sending aid to Haiti or the Phillipines, they ask "what about the occupation?"

To these far Left fanatics, the "occupation" and the fact of Israel's unique evil trumps all else. They see everything Israel does, whether it is a music festival or archaeology or scientific achievements or medical breakthroughs, as simply either proof of oppressing Palestinian Arabs or a scheme to distract the world from Israel's oppression of Palestinian Arabs. The only thing good about Israel, to these haters, is that there are so many people there that loathe Israel.

Like Yourofsky, they simply cannot hold two ideas in their heads at once. Because, to fanatics, the world can only be divided into those who see the world exactly their way and those who don't. There is no grey, no middle ground, nothing even orthogonal to their pet topic. Nothing else exists.

That's pretty much the definition of "fanatic."

(See also here and here for previous examples of this obsession among the anti-Zionist Israelis.)

(h/t Ruchie)